MRE

Dr. Henkel is an Associate Director of the Pacific Marine Energy Center (PMEC) at Oregon State University. For more information about the Pacific Marine Energy Center visit: pmec.us

Dr. Henkel is the Environmental Studies lead for the PacWave project, which consists of two test sites for wave energy devices off the coast of Newport, OR. For PacWave project updates visit: pacwaveenergy.org

Biological Surveys at Sites Targeted for Wave Energy Development

Before wave energy capture facilities are permitted, assessments of the biota in environments such as those targeted for wave energy are being conducted. These surveys are being undertaken (1) to determine if rare or sensitive species are present in these areas and (2) to understand how species distributions and abundances are related to existing environmental conditions in order to determine if future changes in abundances and/or distributions can be attributed to development of wave energy capture facilities.

A diversity of methods are being used to survey different groups of organisms. In soft bottom areas, methods include box coring to sample macrofaunal macroinvertebrates and beam trawling to survey epibenthic invertebrates and ground fishes. CTD casts are done with each sampling to measure physical features of the environments. In hard bottom areas, ROVs have been used to survey habitats and mega invertebrates. To investigate how the presence of device components may shift assemblages from soft-bottom type organisms to attracting hard-bottom associated organisms video landers are used and ROVs will be employed in the future.

Questions about noise from the devices and their potential effects on marine mammals have led to collaborations with PMEL (NOAA's Pacific Marine Envionmental Laboratory) and PNNL (a DOE National Laboratory). Seafloor-mounted and drifting hydrophones have been deployed by Joe Haxel to listen to ambient noise in the environment and to detect marine mammals.

Samples of materials to be used for wave energy devices and the mooring lines have been deployed to observe biofouling and the effectiveness of different coatings (collaboration with Alex Yokochi & Matt Delaney).